


The Living and the Dead

by keshwyn



Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Force Dyad (Star Wars), M/M, No one's ever really gone., Poe Dameron Needs To Grow Up, Polyamory, Post-Canon Fix-It, Post-Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Rey Needs A Hug, Spoilers, This might take a while...
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-12-24
Updated: 2019-12-28
Packaged: 2021-02-26 04:00:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 4
Words: 6,172
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21927103
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/keshwyn/pseuds/keshwyn
Summary: ** Post-Rise of Skywalker**** SPOILERS **Rey tries to figure out how to go on, when it seems like everyone she loves leaves her, one way or another.  When there's only one Jedi, it's not like there's a wide choice of people who understand that the Jedi are also human - and might need some help.
Relationships: Chewbacca & Rey, Finn & Rey (Star Wars), Finn/Rose Tico, Kylo Ren & Rey, Poe Dameron/Finn, Rey & Rose Tico, Rey/Ben Solo
Comments: 2
Kudos: 28





	1. All Life Begins in the Darkness

Rey went to Tatooine after the battle of Exogal, because she didn't know quite else where to go. She could have gone to Ach-To, but after Master Skywalker had all but ordered her to go, that didn't seem right. And anyway, Ach-To had its own memories - memories of standing in the rain, and then seeing… She rubbed at her face; the water on her cheeks was a waste, in the desert; she had learned that long ago.

She went to where Luke had begun, and buried his saber there, and Leia's too. Someday, someone would come in pilgrimage to reclaim them, she was sure. Perhaps it would even be her, though she couldn't imagine the circumstances. She would never be able to return Leia's saber to Leia's home - the asteroid field that was all that remained of Alderaan was no fit place to leave her Master's saber. And anyway, she suspected that Leia would rather her saber stayed with her brother's. Her father's. It seemed...fitting somehow.

But that was the last moment of inspiration that Rey felt for a long time.

After a few days, she went into the desert, walking. BB-8 came with her, even though she warned it that sand was unlikely to be its friend where she was going. It gave her the most encouraging whistle, and she didn't have the heart to tell it no. "I shouldn't underestimate, should I," she whispered.

Solemnly, the little droid shook its head.

She didn't know what she was looking for, and she didn't find it on that first walk into the desert. There were no broken parts for her here to scavenge, to put her life back together. It lay in shattered pieces around her, and she had no idea what tools she should use to fix it.

So she fell back on what she knew - fixing broken machinery. First the moisture condensers; those were the most important, given the desert. The Jawas - she met them quickly - had stripped most of them for salvage, but she could do wonders with just about any mechanical piece that she got her hands on. She had enough condensers running after a week that she didn't have to worry about running out of water. There weren't enough parts to do much more than that, but she suspected the Jawas would would be bringing her pieces to fix once they realized she could fix condensers. 

She didn't dare let herself hope they would bring her any droids. BB-8 was all the company she could seem to stand, and she didn't really know what she would do if she had to talk to someone.

The desert people stayed away from her, after testing her just once. On one of her excursions into the desert, they had surrounded her, screaming, and she had ignited her golden saber and swept into a defensive stance. They clearly knew what a blade like that could cut through, and she wondered how much they remembered of old Obi-Wan Kenobi's time in the desert; did they tell stories of him? What else? She walked into the desert again, and found nothing.

She couldn't sleep in the Falcon. It was too empty. She began sleeping in the homestead, clearing out rooms that had been choked with sand or debris, bringing order to the chaos that was there - at least, enough order that she didn't wake up with sand in her clothes every morning. She piled blankets and rugs she had found buried in the sand on top of her at night, when the air turned freezing cold, and the heaters failed.

Some twenty days after she'd landed the Falcon on the old homestead, she flew it out into the Dune Sea and found the old Jedi's hut, tucked near a sheltering ridge of rock, long abandoned. Echoes of the past told her that this was where Master Skywalker had made his saber, but neither his ghost nor Master Obi-Wan's came to her there. She didn't know what she would say to them anyway, if they came to her. She was the last Jedi, she had claimed the name of Skywalker, but it seemed like an empty hollow victory. There was a place inside her, where she had felt life before, and now it seemed like she couldn't feel anything, ever again. Even Master Leia stayed away, after that first vision when she had buried the sabers and claimed her family name.

She knew it wasn't healthy to be like this. She just wasn't sure what she was supposed to do about it. She ate, she drank, she slept, she bound her scrapes when she got them, and slathered herself with ointment when the sun burned her skin, but it was like some sort of automata did these things - not her.

She flew the Falcon back to the homestead, and hid under a pile of blankets after eating a ration bar.

Two nights later, she woke herself screaming in the middle of the night, BB-8's frantic beeping eventually grounding her in the present. The Emperor had her. She hadn't defeated him after all. He had planted a seed in her, somehow, he lived on inside her. She was trapped in the Dark. She was the Dark. The only beacon of light she could see was impossibly far away, impossibly far out of reach. BB-8 turned on his torch beam, as she huddled in bed under the pile of old scrap blankets and rocked in the freezing desert air, struggling to breathe, to draw some comfort from the Force, even as her terror told her that every time she touched it, she would draw more darkness into her soul, that it would overwhelm her…

She pulled the blankets around her and sobbed until her nose was blocked and her eyes and head ached, and then she sat and stared out at the blackness of the night air in the well, thinking miserably about everything that had brought her here, about everyone and everything that had died to lead her to this moment in time.

About every hole in her heart, where there had once been someone who held out a hand to her. She fell asleep sometime before dawn, cold and despairing.

She woke to the sounds of someone in the lightwell, and when she crawled to the edge of the room she had been sleeping in - it felt more like a hole in the side of a wall, though she knew it must once have been better, Maz Kanata and Chewbacca looked up at her. Chewie gave a single mournful howl, and Rey nearly dissolved into tears again.

But she managed to extricate herself from the blankets to climb down to him, and he wrapped her in a hug.

Maz didn't say anything, and Rey was grateful.


	2. Stone and Sky and Stars and Suns and All

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Despair is a mortal wound, and Rey struggles with it.

Rey hadn't told Finn or Poe where she was going - she hadn't told anyone in the Resistance, actually. She understood, now, why Luke Skywalker had felt compelled to flee the Republic, to immure himself in Ach-To and hide. Everyone was celebrating - well, to be honest, she expected that Finn and Poe were probably alternating between celebrating and crying over each other. (The three of them had clung together, caught on the knife edge between laughter and tears, when everyone else was celebrating the defeat of the Final Order. Finn, because they had both survived. Poe, because he was terrified of what was about to happen and relieved beyond words that he wouldn't have to do it alone, without Finn. Rey because there was a gaping pit in the middle of her heart, but at least Finn was still alive… She hadn't quite believed that Chewie wasn't an illusion at that moment. Everything had been so surreal.)

But then it began to feel like the net of reality that she stood on was unraveling, as people began to ask more and more of her. And so she had promised the two of them that she would send messages - that she wouldn't completely disappear like Luke had, but that she needed some time - and she had asked Chewie for the Falcon, and she had...fled.

She was too exhausted to feel shame, but the despair still gnawed at her, like the little desert thieves that came in the night and chewed through the wires she had just spent all day soldering back into place. She couldn't seem to stop the tide, and she knew that if she went back to her friends, they would want to know what, to know how they could help. But she had no answers. So she sent them short messages, telling them she was still trying to find her place, that she'd write more soon...and struggled with herself alone.

Somehow, Maz had found her.

For the first few days, the little humanoid just worked in silence alongside Rey, or not - she had an uncanny sense for that moment when Rey couldn't stand to be around anyone, and would quietly make herself scarce, only to return when the solitude started to be worse than the company.

Chewie stayed too - he worked on the Falcon for the most part, wrapping himself in his own work - but at night, he joined them down in the lightwell, wrapping his arms around Rey when she started to shiver. His entire posture was just as dejected as Rey's, and she could feel he mourned just as deeply as she did.

Eventually, watching the fire one night under the star-blazed sky, she realized why.  _ He watched Ben grow up, of course. Ben was the child of his dearest friends. _ And somehow, that realization broke the damn of black despair that was gripping her, and she was sobbing into his fur as he let his own sorrow out in howls of purest misery.

Maz just watched, her wise eyes wide and calm and - in an unasked-for moment of grace - not judging. When they had finally screamed their dejection to the sky enough, Maz said, softly, "You are not alone."

Rey sniffled - she hated the feeling of her nose blocked up, but after all the crying she'd been doing, she couldn't seem to avoid it. "I know," she whispered, hoarse after all of it. "But…"

"But they do not quite understand," Maz finished for her, when she couldn't get the words out.

Rey shook her head. "I don't...Poe lost Leia. He knew her for, for years before I did. How can I…?"

"How can you grieve so much, when he is still going on?" Maz sighed, sitting back against the stone wall and letting the ground's warmth sink into her back. "Hmm. So. First - you are all young. There is no cure for that but time. But Poe did not face the Emperor." The lenses on her goggles glittered in the fire. "He did not  **die** ."

Even Chewie's warmth couldn't keep Rey from the wracking shudder that tore through her. "And he was not brought back, only to lose the one thing that had anchored him. He is a great man, but he has not been through what you have been through - no, Rey," Maz leaned forward, as Rey started to get up and walk away, feeling almost compelled to run from this baring of her own soul, "you will heal. It will come."

"I feel...I feel like there's nothing left," Rey whispered, leaning her forehead against a doorframe. "But the Galaxy...the Jedi…they  **need** me. And there's nothing there. I'm empty. I'm nothing."

"The Jedi will wait - patience is a virtue they have cultivated for millenia. I have watched them. And the Galaxy will put itself back together again - it always does. You have time." Maz stood up, walked to where Rey listed, uncomfortable. "Give yourself some of the patience the Jedi have, and breathe, Rey. Just breathe. Each breath you take is another moment of being among the living."

The words had an uncomfortable echo of the first lesson Master Skywalker had tried to teach her - but even then, he hadn't been  **wrong.**

Rey shut her eyes, and breathed. She smelled smoke, the faint funk of Chewie's fur, the sand giving off the last of the day's heat. A night breeze the brought the hint of some plant nestled in the shelter of a boulder. Grease. Ozone…

_ Like a lightsaber -- or lightning -- _

"Just breathe," Maz repeated, interrupting the thought before it had a chance to get moment. "You do not need to act. Not yet."

Rey struggled to regain her momentum, then got up, settled herself against Chewie - and breathed. Snakes in the sand, crawling bugs, ration bar ends and machine oil, fur and fire and wool and stone and sky and star and suns and all. The air filled her, and the unceasing wail in her head slowly seemed to subside. It wasn't gone, she wasn't healed, but it became less overwhelming.

When she opened her eyes, she felt like she stood on solid ground for the first time in more than a month - not a great deal of solid ground, to be sure; it could crumble the moment she moved. But for that moment, the black despair had lifted.

Maz nodded.

"Thank you," Rey whispered, and went to bed. The next morning, she woke up feeling grey and worn and convalescent, and wrote to Poe, Finn, and Rose:  _ I need Finn for a little while. Can you spare him? _


	3. Beacon

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rey gets by with a little help from her friends...

Rey got an answer 8 hours after she'd sent her message:  _ They're coming. Sorry I can't come too. - P. _

She spent the next four days struggling to clean out a couple of extra rooms in the old homestead, and working on fixing an additional two condensers, so that she'd have enough drinking water. Maz shook her head, and took her transport off to Mos Espa to buy some extra rations and dehydrated food. She also came back with four more carboys of water, in case the condensers failed. When Rey protested, Maz shook her head. "Pay it forward, if you must repay. But consider Rey, if you would do the same for a friend of yours that is so wounded?"

Rey winced, reminded that Leia had warned her of the Jedi's tendency toward martyrdom. "My brother - bless him - was one of the most self-sacrificing people I can think of. And I don't disagree, to a point. But there's something to be said for making sure you're healthy yourself. There are reasons I stopped with the training…" she had trailed off.

And Rey remembered, with a pang, that Leia had stopped because she foresaw that her training would be the death of her son. And it had been - in its own way. Leia had been unable to slow Ben's fall to the Dark Side, begun by the training she had halted to try to save her son. And yet, Ben…

She shuddered, and Maz put a kind hand on her shoulder. "Not yet," she murmured. "It's not time for that wound yet. Give it more time."

"He killed so many," Rey snarled, unable to leave it alone. "He killed so many - he killed his  **father!** \- and I loved him, and what does that make me?"

"Human, and complex, just like the rest of us," Maz said wryly, and shook her head, looking Rey full in the face. "I see a woman who has had too many changes at once, too many shocks, too much put upon her. In time, you will find your peace, Rey. But your feet are only just begun on your journey - did you become a Jedi in a single day?"

"No…"

"Then do not expect understanding in a single day. A flash of insight, perhaps - but it will take time to understand."

Rey was startled to hear herself make a little growl, like one of Chewbacca's frustrated snarls, and Maz laughed. "You're on the mend," she promised, and Rey had to admit that she could, in fact, feel something beyond her own numbness and anguish.

Granted, that feeling was  **anger** , and that was problematic…

"Are you here to make sure I don't fall to the Dark Side?" she asked Maz, bluntly.

Maz smiled her own small smile. "Perhaps, say I am here to give you the choice of not falling prey to it. You have, after all, seen that you can regain yourself even after you have given in to it."

Rey frowned, and then said slowly, "With help - Anakin Skywalker, and...and Ben...but the Jedi teach that those who fall to the Dark Side are irredeemable." Maz said nothing, and Rey sighed. "They're wrong, aren't they." It wasn't a question.

"There are reasons I never chose to pursue the Jedi path," Maz said, and went to go unload the carboys.

Rose and Finn arrived that evening, an hour before sunset, while Rey was still picking at the thought that a fall to the Dark Side was perhaps not as irrevocable as she had learned, like a piece of gristle stuck between her teeth.

Her first sight of Finn and Rose drove that thought straight out of her head, because it wasn't two auras she felt coming down the ramp of the smallship, it was three. "WHEN?" she gasped.

Rose, who looked a bit green around the gills, glanced up at Finn and said, "Told you she'd know." Finn gave Rose a hug around the hips - gently - and said, "A couple of nights after Exogal, as best we can guess. I, ah…"

"Poe and I have come to an agreement," Rose said, firmly. "Namely, that he won't be upset if I won't be upset, and vice versa, and both of us will do our best to keep this particular lump from falling in love with anyone  **else** for a bit."

"Except for our daughter," Finn put in firmly. "You're not allowed to stop that."

Rose grimaced, and rubbed her sternum. "Not sure I could if I tried," she admitted. "She's going to get the strangest set of parents ever...ooooooh." She squinched her eyes shut, and Rey instinctively reached out to quash the sudden surge of nausea that was threatening to overwhelm Rose. She put one hand on the woman's hand on her breastbone, and Rose let out a strangled gasp of relief.

"What did you…oh! I wish you'd been at the last Council meeting, Rey - I could've used your help then."

When Rey felt a surge of guilt, Finn put a hand on her shoulder, and shook his head minutely at Rose. "What, and ruin a perfectly good story to tell her? They needed to be reminded the meeting was an hour over time anyway! We can tell her she was running Council meetings from in utero!"

Rose, who looked rather more like herself, had to laugh at that, and so did Rey. Finn turned to Rey, and held her by both shoulders, looking her in the face for a few long moments before nodding and giving her a bear hug. "We'll always be here for you," he said. "We'll always come back for you."

Rey felt the tears start in her eyes, and buried her face in Finn's shirt. Behind her, at the bottom of the lightwell, she heard Chewbacca let out a howl of protest. "Yeah, yeah, Chewie, I heard you - we're coming. Come on, he's hungry."

They went down to eat reheated grell stew around the fire, and Rose observed, "This is probably the first time in a month that the smell of anything hadn't made me nauseous. If you can ever figure out how to bottle that trick, Rey, mothers-to-be everywhere will sing praises to your name."

Rey quirked a half smile. "I'll keep that in mind," she said, "if I ever want anyone singing my praises."

Rose sobered, and Finn said, "Still having survivor's guilt?"

Rey shook her head after a moment's thought, and whispered, "I...don't think so."

Finn glanced at Rose, then at Maz and Chewie, who both nodded, and said, "Want to go for a walk?"

"I'll do the dishes," Rose put in.

So Rey found herself climbing out of the lightwell and into the dark desert air, Finn following along behind. BB-8 chirped, lit up his ambient ring lights on his head to make sure that none of them would step in a snake burrow, and Finn started heading south.

"You once told me that you didn't think anybody knew you," Finn said, once they'd walked in silence for a few minutes. "So I'm not going to try to tell you I know you now - I just know you're suffering. What can I do, Rey?"

Rey shook her head. "I wish I knew?" she whispered.

"Hm," said Finn, and was silent for another span of time that felt longer than it probably really ways. Rey was suddenly struck by how far he'd come from the posturing, frantic boy who she'd first met in a desert very like this one.  _ I wonder what Maz would see in his eyes now… _

Finally, her oldest human friend said, "OK, I'm going to throw ideas out, you tell me what sticks?" He turned to face her, looking at her as if he were drinking her in with his eyes. She nodded mutely.

"You've been exchanging recipes with that weirdo we met on SakTain - the one with the green tentacles and that stove that looked like a pipe organ - and you've been trying to figure out for ages how to tell me that you want to ditch all this Jedi silliness and go cook omelets for it."

Rey stared at him for a long, long moment as he stood there, pokerfaced, and then she cracked, sat down in the sand, and laughed until the tears ran down her cheeks. Finn's smile was quiet, and he sat down next to her and waited until she was done. "Feel better?" he asked when she finally finished and was down to merely hiccuping.

She giggled faintly, and nodded. "I...don't think that was entirely healthy."

"I'm pretty sure it wasn't actually that funny," Finn countered. "But what do  **we** know anyway? We never had normal anything to calibrate with."

"Oh Finn…" Rey sighed.

"Yeah," he sighed back. "So...you remember that thing I was gonna tell you, when we were going to die in the sand trap a couple of months ago?"

"Yes…?" she said cautiously.

"And you were bugging me about it, and I wouldn't tell you?"

"And you wouldn't tell Poe, either, I remember," she agreed.

"So I'm going to tell you now. And I want you to listen to me. And believe this with everything you have in you."

"..."

"I love you, Rey. You are my best friend, and I can't imagine my life without you. Please take care of yourself, ok?" Rey stared at him in the dim light. BB-8 was very still. "Because I know you've had a hell of a time, and I want you to be happy. Hell, I want the galaxy to be happy - but you in particular."

She could feel the truth of everything he was saying - and she could sense underneath the faint regret that their lives had gone the way they had, that they had not met under different circumstances, when his love might have gone another way. But there was no regret for his love for her - only for the circumstances they were stuck in now.

The love in him - somehow, the First Order had never tainted it, never broken it. It shone like a beacon in the Force - for Rose, for Poe, for her, for his daughter-to-be, for Chewie. For the Resistance that had become his family - and indeed, for the Galaxy that he had been forced to enslave and battle, until somehow, he had freed himself, and Poe, and begun the unlikely journey that lead him to her.

"Finn," she whispered, and wrapped her arms around him, sobbing. He just held her, and let her cry herself out. When she sat back, he wiped the tears away from her cheeks with a pair of sandy thumbs, and said, "Ahh, shit, I forgot," as she scrubbed at the sand he left stuck behind, and then they were both laughing.

Finally, they were just sitting in the dark, and BB-8 rolled up to give them his own personal brand of a thumb's up, which made them both laugh again, and then Finn said, "Rey?"

"Yeah?"

"So...what can I do to help?"

Rey let out a long sigh, and said, "Sit with me while I breathe - help me stay here, alive."

"Always," he replied back instantly. "But...could we do it back at the homestead? Because it's really damn cold out here."

Abruptly, Rey realized that she  **was** cold. "You know what?" she rasped, getting to her feet.

"What?"

"You're right."

They stumbled back across the sand to the lightwell of the homestead, to find that the fire was banked and only Chewie waited for them. He gave them a gruff grunt, and climbed up to go sleep in the Falcon, and Rey and Finn settled down next to the fire, breathing.

When Rey woke up in the morning, her right leg was asleep, because Finn had tipped over in the night onto it, and was snoring. She patted his head, and whispered, "I don't know what I'd do without a friend like you." She looked up at Rose, who was climbing down the makeshift ladder from the upper rooms.

"He's got a good heart," Rose said.

"The best," Rey agreed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope this story gives me a bit of a break; Christmas break is awesome for writing, but I have family coming in 4 hours, and have *got* to clean the house or there will be nowhere for anyone to sit and have dinner. Aaaargh. I'd rather be writing...


	4. Inklings of Family

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Finn and Rose and Rey deal with family, emotional labor, and ugly emotions left over from the war.

A few days later, the condensers all worked, and the Jawas showed up with the first load of junk to trade to Rey in exchange for repair work on some of their droids - having figured out just from watching the fact that the homestead was not falling apart that she must be doing  **something** . Rey did her best by the 'droids, but it made her heart ache to see how many of them had restraining bolts on them - she loathed those things. Most of the 'droids seemed resigned to their fate, but there were two who chirped at her that they had been stolen, that they wanted to return to their families. She quietly disabled their restraining bolts on even as she worked on repairing their treads and gears and sensors. She had no idea whether the 'droids would get away, but at least she was giving them a chance. She couldn't buy them - she had no money, and the Jawas weren't susceptible to her meddling with their minds.

They left shortly thereafter, and Rey retired to the garage in a simmering rage, aware both that she should not allow herself to be this angry if she were to be a good Jedi, and that she was so thoroughly fed up with the Jedi and the Sith and everything about the whole battle between the Light Side and the Dark Side that she didn't care anymore.

As she was working furiously on repairing a nearly defunct speeder, she heard Finn come up behind her. "Did you give them a chance to get away?" he said quietly. His understanding tone - he knew what it was to be a slave, and he knew why she would help them - helped her fury die down to something bearable. And his concern was for her and for them, not for the Resistance's sole Jedi knight (if that's even what she was anymore), not for some legend, not for some abstract ideal or convenient prop to help restore something that should have died a long time ago...

"Yes, but...it's not enough. They'll be caught. There are too many things in the dunes that might grab them."

"You'll do better next time. You know what to expect now. You'll plan ahead and make a safe place for them to rendezvous. You'll set up something - I know you."

The last time he had told her that, she had snapped that nobody knew her. But he was right - that was the sort of thing she would do. Rey took a deep breath, and let it out slowly. "You're right. It's not...I can't fix everything. Not all at once. But I can try."

"Sure you try." She turned around to look at him smiling, admiration in his voice. "Even if sometimes you forget to fix yourself."

"Finn, you are amazing," she said, putting down the wrenches and letting her forehead rest against his shoulder for a moment. "You never let them break you."

He snorted. "You have no idea," he muttered. "But breaks heal, and life goes on - you taught me that. Look, I have a favor to ask."

"Anything," she said instantly, without having to think. She knew how much of her momentary stability was a gift from him.

"I got word from Poe; there are a bunch of Troopers who are rumored to be heading for mutiny, but they need someone to infiltrate and lead them. I'm probably their best bet. Even if I am going to have to go by something other than FN-2187 when I go in. Can you keep Rose from following me? I...I don't want to risk her."

Rey thought of all the times Finn had tried to talk her into running away from the Resistance, and frowned. "I won't to do that, Finn," she said finally, looking up into his dark brown eyes. "If she wants to stay, I'll do my best to help her. But I don't - I won't keep her here against her will. Any more than you'd knock me over the head and carry me off somewhere into the hinterlands - now." Finn's crooked grin made her smile. "Maybe try reminding her that I can keep her from losing her breakfast every day, though?"

A few hours later, Rose found her in the workshop area, calmer, talking softly to a wire she was threading through a particularly narrow hole. It was clogged with rust, and Rey was guiding it half with her hands and half with the Force, and using it as a meditative exercise in patience. "Finn says you wouldn't let him abandon me here without him talking to me."

Rey dropped the wire and scrambled out from beneath the speeder. "Yes. People have to make their own choices. He knows that, he's just worried about you."

"Thank you," she said. "I…" she leaned against the wall, and sighed. "I don't like Poe very much, and the thought of him going back to Poe...without me…"

"He loves you," Rey said instantly. "I can sense that from half a galaxy away if I focus on it; he'd no more abandon you than he would me."

"I know," Rose breathed out, halfway between a prayer and a curse. "But he loves everyone he gets to know."

Rey thought about this for a moment, then nodded. "And they love him back, because they can tell. It's his strength. It's how he saves people. It's how he saved himself, too." For a moment, she felt her gaze turn inward, contrasting her memory of how Finn had tried to help her save herself, and how Kylo had tried to use her to save  **himself…** She shied away from that thought, like a droid from an EMP pulse.

"It's going to destroy him someday," Rose said, unaware of where Rey's mind had gone, and Rey was grateful to turn her thoughts back to her friend.

"It hasn't yet. And I don't think it will - not with you around."

Rose sighed. "But he won't always be around me. And Poe won't save him. Poe sacrifices everyone on the altar of the cause. His only redeeming quality is that he does it with himself first and foremost."

A long moment of silence filled the garage, as Rey considered that. Finally, she said, "Poe had Leia to rely on for too long, I think. He didn't have to grow up, he could be a hero, and she would handle the logistics. Now she's gone…" her voice choked up for a moment, and Rose took two strides to close the distance between herself and Rey, grabbing her hand. Rey took a couple of long, shuddering breaths.

"I'm sorry," Rose said. "I'm dumping all over you. I shouldn't be burdening you with this."

Rey let out a little half-hearted choke of laughter. "Yes. No. I don't know. I think you should be making  **Poe** listen to this. He's the one who needs to hear it."

Rose's expression looked like she'd bitten into something incredibly sour. "Yeah, well." She took a deep breath. "I don't think he wants to listen to me. He knows he killed my sister." Her hand closed over her medallion, and her knuckles were white on it. "And a lot of other people. But he doesn't want to think about it."

There wasn't really anything to say to that, Rey decided, especially since it wasn't really wrong. It wasn't all true, but it was close enough. Finally, she changed the subject. "Did you know, I think Finn could be a Jedi - he's really strong in the Force. But I don't think he should be, unless he decides he wants to be. The Jedi way is all about detachment, and impersonal love - and he loves very personally." When Rose let out a snort of laughter at that, Rey added, "And you know, I don't think that's wrong. I'm not sure I'm a very good Jedi either. I think it will probably be better for the New Republic if there are more people like  **him** , and fewer people like the Jedi with high ideals and goals. We need more people who genuinely care about the ones they know and love."

"I'm lucky to have met him," Rose admitted.

"I don't believe in luck anymore," Rey sighed, "but yes."

"Paige is going to be the most spoiled baby ever."

"Tell me you mind."

Rose laughed. "OK, you win. I'll let him go. But I'm going to tell him he's got to get Poe to promise not to put him in situations of unnecessary risk, because I know he's going to get himself into plenty of them without Poe's help."

She showed herself out of the garage. Rey followed her a few minutes later, to go sit on top of the Falcon and stare up at the sunsets. It had the advantage that the 'droids couldn't reach her there - and she suspected that BB-8 had been keeping an eye on her, making sure she didn't do anything or try to sneak off alone.

Finn found her, of course; she felt him reaching for her through the Force, unconsciously, and following his feelings in a way that she suspected he didn't even realize. "Thanks," he said. "I trust you to keep her - them - safe."

Rey let out a choked snort of laughter.

"I mean, now that the Sith are gone --" he stopped as she stiffened, and said, "Nevermind. It's not important. You take care of you, and her, and I'll be back soon, OK? I promised her - I'll promise you too. I'm not leaving. You're my family, Rey, I'm going to come back. I'm going to be the best dad that's ever been." He paused, then scooted over and wrapped an arm around her waist. "And you're going to be the best aunt that's ever been, right?"

She swallowed hard around a sudden lump in her throat. "Aunt?"

"Well, I'm going to be Dad, and Poe's going to be Papa, and Rose says she has no idea what Paige is going to call her but her mom was Mama, so I guess that makes you her Aunt, right?"

_ A family… _ One of the holes in Rey's heart felt a little less gaping. It only made that  **other** one seem all the larger, but she could remember living with a hole like that before, in a fallen AT-AT, waiting for her parents to come back. This time, she would have something else to balance it.

Balance. That was a good thought to meditate on. "Right," she whispered. "Auntie Rey it is." She reached over and gripped Finn's hand. "But you had better come back, Finn, or I'm...I don't know what I'm going to do."

"Rose says if I die, she'll hunt down my corpse and find a Scarlaian Nightwitch to raise me from the dead, but without my feet so I'll never be able to leave again," Finn admitted. "I didn't even know what one of those  **was** before, and now I can't think of anything scarier than that." He grinned. "Fortunately, she's not going to have to do that, and neither do you. I'm coming back. It just might take me a little while."

Rey nodded slowly, and gave him another hug. "Good."

He left the next morning, after breakfast, and Rose and Rey stared at the contrail in silence long after it faded. Then Rose said, "OK, let's get that speeder working."

"Yes," Rey agreed, and the two women went into the garage.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've actually been writing future chapters, because there's all this stuff I want to write about later on down the line; my brain is not cooperating, and I've learned the hard way on other stories that if I write too far ahead, I never get back to the missing bits in the middle. So this may be a trifle sporadic until I get enough of the reconciliation between the Last Jedi and Rise of Skywalker sorted out in here to make what I want to be writing coherent and clear.


End file.
